Evicting Champ A Legal Tangle Airport Near Decision On Future Of Food Lease

July 28, 1986|By Goldie Blumenstyk of The Sentinel Staff

If a shopping center owner could prove that a coffee shop tenant was defrauding him of rent, eviction would be a relatively simple and predictable result.

It is not nearly so clear-cut for operators of the Orlando International Airport, who are landlords to Central Florida's most public restaurant and earlier this month faced a comparable situation with Champ Williams' family- run airport restaurants.

The finding was based on grounds that Williams' McCoy Restaurants Inc. had not kept accurate business records and had not paid all rents due. The rent is based on a percentage of sales.

The Williamses have denied the charges.

Now, with less than two weeks to go before it begins the highly competitive selection of three new concessionaires to serve food and drinks at the airport for the next 15 years, the authority must decide what to do. Some of the biggest food companies in the country, along with McCoy, are expected to bid for the right to serve the growing airport market, which will have 12.5 million passengers this year.

No date has been set for the decision on Williams, but authority director Walter Jones said he expects there will be a special meeting this week. Authority members say it is a question that will require weighing a number of factors:

-- Could a company be brought in to serve food in the nine-month interim?

-- Would an eviction attempt prompt a lawsuit or create hostility that would disrupt orderly transition to the new concessionaires after April 30?

-- What kinds of problems could result if the authority and Williams get into disputes over who keeps the freezers, the ovens, the stoves and other valuable restaurant equipment?

-- What would happen to the $3.6 million buyout payment the authority had tentatively agreed to pay Williams in exchange for improvements he built into the terminal when it opened in 1981?

-- How will the decision affect the credibility of the authority? This question is perhaps the most important to the authority, which is made up of elected officials and appointees of Gov. Bob Graham.

''The complexity of the thing is mind-boggling, if you start to think about it,'' said Sherman Dantzler, a banker and vice chairman of the authority.

Eviction sounds easy, Dantzler said, but ''it really is not that simple. . . . If it's disruptive who suffers? I'll tell you who suffers: the public.'' Dantzler is expected to lead the debate because the aviation authority's chairman, Charles Potter, died Thursday.

Sensitive to the possibility of a lawsuit from Williams, authority members were somewhat reluctant last week to discuss the situation. They also said that before deciding, they want to hear from authority director Jones, who has been studying strategies, and from airport lawyer Egerton K. van den Berg, who has been negotiating with Williams' lawyers since the July 16 vote.

However, the members' experience on the authority has left them with some instinctive feelings.

''There are just some things where principle overrides cost,'' said Mayor Bill Frederick, who campaigned in 1980 on an anti-Williams platform.

Orange County Commissioner Hal Marston, the other elected official on the board, offered a similar opinion. ''I believe it's time to terminate'' the lease, which means Williams would no longer have the right to sell at the airport, Marston said. Last year Williams reported sales of $12 million in food and drink at his airport restaurants.

Marston said he expects the authority could arrange for a temporary food company to be operating in the terminal by September and that the authority could withhold any buyout payment until Williams pays what the board contends he owes in back rent.

The $3.6 million payment is ''one of the chips in the game'' for the airport, said Marston.

''Even though somebody might consider that you are a wimp for considering it,'' he said he hopes to find an option that satisfies both the authority's need to prove its credibility and its responsibility to carry out day-to-day airport operations.

Van den Berg would not comment on his negotiations or the airport's options.

Jones said his staff has been talking with companies that offer cafeteria service about providing interim service, and another reliable source said Friday that at least two companies, Shamrock Food Service of the Atlanta area and Morrison Inc., have been asked to submit proposals.

Williams' lawyer, David King, said he was not aware that the authority staff was looking for a replacement but that his clients ''certainly hope that's not the course of action that's followed.''